“The biggest thing about your wedding day is the fact that everyone is there to celebrate. The rest is just details.” - Justin Johnson
Justin Johnson from North Carolina and Simon McNorton, who is partially Indian, from the UK are very much aware of how they have the makings of an unlikely pair - their backgrounds, traditions, political stances and religious views are, after all, distinctly different from each other. When they first crossed paths, Simon was a grad student while Justin was a part of the Marines and had just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Their wedding at the D.C. War Memorial in Washington, however, was a veritable celebration of these differences.
“It was an interesting challenge,” Justin told BuzzFeed Life, of planning the big day. “But we agree on more than we disagree — and we certainly learned a lot from each other in the process.”
Married in May of last year, they were both pretty certain about one thing, though: that they wanted their wedding ceremony to be a blend of different styles and cultures. Justin came to the ceremony donned his Marine Blues, while Simon came dressed in a traditional Indian Sherwani, a nod to his own cultural heritage.
“I had my heart set on it the same way a bride might have [a] vision of the perfect dress,” Simon told BuzzFeed Life. “Got it tailored, spent far too much money on it, but I felt like a Maharaja when I put it on. I’m still looking for excuses to wear it.”
Involving their family and friends in the celebrations was also extremely important to them both, including those who weren’t in the country. Much of Simon’s family was unable to make it from the U.K., and were amiably Skyped in so they could be a part of it, too. “My dad was at the front of the ceremony the entire way through holding up my smartphone to Skype with my grandmother, aunt, and two brothers back home in England. They watched the entire thing,” Simon said. A close friend officiated the ceremony, after the two talked through every alternative to find midground between a reverend, who Justin wanted conducting the wedding, and Simon, who wanted to keep it secular.
The two currently reside in the U.K. and have been married for a year now. It is refreshing and heartwarming to see the unadulterated joy in these photographs - with a mutual willingness to compromise and an innate acceptance of each other’s differences, they seem to have discarded of stereotypes to participate in a ceremony that was beautiful and ultimately, truly their own.
“One of the lucky things about having a non-traditional wedding — a same-sex couple, one of us being non-religious, coming from two very different backgrounds — is that we weren’t fixed down by any particular traditions or cultural norms,” the couple told Washingtonian. “We were able to really do whatever we wanted.”
Image Credit: Marisa Guzman-Aloia / photoguzman.com